Month: January 2014

CLARE County Council last night debated a motion through the Irish language for the first time in years. The local authority gave their commitment to backing an Irish language Summer School for West Clare, based on the life of noted Gaeilgeóir and a champion of the Irish language, Anrai De Blác.

A motion on the subject, which was put forward by Cllr Gabriel Keating (FG) was passed at last night’s January meeting of Clare County Council.

A debate on the motion was conducted entirely in the Irish language, the first motion completed ‘as Gaeilge’ by the local authority in a number of years.

Cllr Keating, Cllr Christy Curtin (Ind) and Mayor of Clare, Joe Arkins (FG) each spoke on the motion in the Irish language with only Pat Keane (FF) speaking though the English.

The restoration of a Gaeltacht area in Clare has been mooted on a number of occasions in recent years. Works to restore the Irish language has been ongoing in a number of locations in Clare in recent years.

The former Mayor of Clare proposed the establishment of Gaeltacht areas in West Clare a number of years ago to facilitate the creation of an Irish college in area. Figures released following the last census showed a strong proficiency in the Irish language among Clare people are hopes are high that a revival is on the cards.

Meanwhile, in a separate motion, Cllr PJ Ryan (Ind) has requested that Clare County Council write to the newly-formed Irish Water Organisation demanding that they replace all lead piping which remains in the system.

Irish Water, which took over responsibly for the Clare water system 14 days ago, was last week embroiled in a controversy after it was revealed that the organisation has spent € 50 million on consultants last year.

CLARE will receive less money from central government than any other county in Ireland in 2014, it was confirmed at last week’s budget meeting of Clare County Council.

Clare County Council will receive just € 2.647 million under the Local Government Fund (LGF) for 2014, a reduction of almost € 10 million on the € 12.3 million received by the county in 2013.

This represents a 78.48 per cent de- crease in the amount paid to Clare in just 12 months and also means that Clare County Council will receive less funding than any other local authority in Ireland under the Local Government Fund.

Much of this reduction is due to the transfer of water services from Clare County Council to the newly-formed Irish Water company.

Speaking at last week’s budget meeting, a number of councillors said that they felt they had been betrayed by the allocation from central government, especially considering that Clare recorded one of the highest compliance rates in the country for the Local Property Tax.

Commenting during the debate, Major of Clare, Joe Arkins (FG), said that he made contact with the Minster for Environment, Phil Hogan, to highlight the amount of LGF which has been allocated to Clare this year.

According to Cllr Arkins, the spokesperson for the Minister for the Environment said that the low level of funding for Clare County Council was a result of the establishment of Irish Water and the transfer of responsibilities from Clare County Council to this new group.

Cllr Tommy Brennan (Ind) also accused the new Irish Water company of taking “the cream” from this year’s budget.

Speaking about the budget a a whole, county manager Tom Coughlan said the Clare County Council would continue to work hard to provide services in a fast changing environment.

“Change is happening very quickly. Every day I am informed with some- thing different about the way that we work. Despite the fact that all that change is driving at us and challenging us we must ensure there is a structure in place to meet the needs of the people of Clare,” he said.

“If you look at the pay rates between 2009 and 2014, there has been a reduction of more than € 10 million.”

Mr Coughlan also confirmed that the budget was drafted before the recent storm damage along the western coast and that there was no funds in the budget for remedial works.

THE last ever singular budget for the town of Kilrush was passed on Thursday night last, with councillors voting on an expenditure of more than € 1.34 million.

Unlike other years, the budget took account that the councillors would become redundant in May with the dissolution of all town councils, and as a result funding for councillors’ wages and expenses is to cover just the first half of the year.

The € 1,342,548 budget for 2014 increased from € 1,327,958 in 2013. Income, excluding rates and pension levy, was estimated at € 576,183 in 2014 compared to € 631,133 in 2013.

Town manager Anne Haugh ex- plained, “It has been a particularly difficult exercise to balance the Budget for 2014. Kilrush Town Council are proposing no increase in commercial rates for 2014 being mindful of the current difficult economic climate and the difficulties that same pose for local businesses. It should be noted however, that with the proposed abolition of Kilrush Town Council a harmonisation of rates across the county over a ten year period is proposed.”

The Draft Budget been prepared with no income from the Local Government Fund.

“However we are still proposing to maintain the existing level of services in 2014,” said Ms Haugh.

Council payroll costs for this year are to remain the same at € 425,000

A 2005 loan for the upgrading of Henry Street and the Vandeleur Walled Garden project will cost the council € 66,154 this year.

Income from rents is expected to be up this year as refurbishment work to Kilrush Town Council’s Housing Stock means there are more houses available to rent.

An income from rents of local authority dwellings is estimated at € 320,000 with just over one tenth of the income ear marked for maintenance and refurbishment works.

Pay parking, which has proven a hot potato for the council in the past, is expected to bring in € 45, 500 to the council coffers.

Planning applications are also expected to be up. Due to the increase in the number of planning applica- tions received in 2013, an increase to € 3,000 has been provided for in Planning Application Fees for 2014.

Also included in this programme group is a provision of € 13,000 for tourism development and promotion, to fund the marketing and development of Kilrush as a significant tourist attraction.

“As in previous years, support for various projects have been included as it is felt that in these recessionary times, assistance to community projects is even more important than ever,” said Ms Haugh, aware that support for such projects in the future will fall to a larger local authority. Therefore it has been decided to again provide the Community and Development Projects Grants of € 5,500, the Community and Art Grants of € 2,000 and the Contribution to Graveyards of € 800. It is also proposed to increase the contribution to the Chamber of Commerce for the Christmas lights to € 10,500 to assist in the repayment of the balance of a loan taken out by the Chamber to buy the lights.

A further provision of € 5,000 has been provided for the Shop Front Initiative due to its success in 2013. It is also proposed that an increased provision of € 3,500 be made available for twinning for a delegation from Kilrush Town Council to travel to Plouzane in 2014 due to the proposed abolition of town councils in 2014.

One off capital projects are also to receive the full support of the town council before it comes to an end in four months time.

A ROADWAY used by more than a million tourists each year to travel between the Cliffs of Moher and Lahinch will not survive a month, if urgent work is not carried out.

The road, which is located on the Lahinch side of Liscannor village, was badly undermined during last week’s storm and, according to Patrick Blake of the Liscannor Har- bour Committee, will not survive another large swell.

With large sea swells expected in February and March, the road will be lucky to make it to the summer of work is not carried out soon.

“We have a very serious problem with the road which has been completely undermined and the Cliffs of Moher road is in danger of being closed. A stone wall that was protecting the road has been totally wiped out. If I was driving on that road, and a lorry was coming in the other direction, I would not keep going. It is that dangerous. All that is left there is mud holding the road together and it is a drop of 30 or 40 feet. We have a high tide coming in February and a couple in March and that could be the end of it.

“The pier [in Liscannor] itself, which is over 200 years old, has also been badly damaged. The power of the tide also created a couple of very large craters, which will have to be repaired.

“The Clathane Road is also very badly damaged. Farm land is not even flooded, it is covered with stones. The storm came like a Tsunami and wiped everything before it.”

More than 200 people turned out in Liscannor last Saturday to help restore the local pier and harbour following the devastation brought by Storm Catherine.

“It was like a group of locusts moving across the place. They swept across the place going unreal hard work all the way. We have five tractors there and they removed tonnes and tonnes of seaweed out of the way,” continued Patrick.

“The work done was amazing. We had people from the Surf Club in Lahinch and people coming from all over the country to help. It shows how people come together in a crisis. It was an amazing day, the atmosphere was so positive and everyone coming together to help.”

HUNDREDS of people descended on Lahinch and Liscannor over the weekend to help in the biggest cleanup operation ever undertaken in the county.

More than 200 people took part in a two-day clean up of the Promenade organised by the West Coast Surf Club on Friday and Saturday. With people travelling from all over Ireland to take part, the club was able to send groups to Liscannor, Kilmacreahy and Cregg to help with the clean-up operations in those locations.

Both the Old Course and the Castle Course at Lahinch reopened for business last Friday following a major clean up by volunteers on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. As of yesterday, 14 holes are playable on the Old Course with all hole playable, excluding bunkers, on Castle Course.

Two time major winner, Greg Norman, also mentioned the storms impact on Lahinch and Doonbeg on Twitter last week.

“Amazing photo of waves and wind pounding the beautiful town of Lahinch in Ireland last Thurs. My course at Doonbeg is okay,” he said.

Meanwhile, the gym at Lahinch Seaworld reopened for businesses yesterday and management are hoping the the pool facility will be open to the public again from next Monday, January 20.

According to Cliodhna Fawl of the West Coast Surf Club, locals and people from all over the coun- try have been doing their bit to get Lahinch back on its feet.

“People travelled from Dublin and all over Ireland to help with the clean up. We had about 80 people working with us on Friday and another 100 people came on Saturday, so we got a lot of work done,” she said.

“We collected a massive amount of rubbish and debris from Lahinch and we were able to send out groups to other areas on Saturday. A lot of debris and stone was removed from Liscannor, we still have some work to finish in Cregg which we will hopefully get to soon.

“We would like to thank Clare County Council and Clean Coast for providing the gloves and bags and to John and Jessie who drove up from Ennis with lots of food for all the workers.”

Lahinch Seaworld is hopeful of reopening fully from next Monday, but no official date can yet be given as it takes the pool between seven and fourteen days to warm up after a complete shutdown.

“The gym reopened today and we’ve had a great crowd in already this morning. People have been very supportive,” said Joe Garrihy of Lahinch Seaworld.

“We are working on the heating system at the moment and we should be able to turn that on tomorrow with a view to reopening next Monday but we will have to wait how long that will take to heat up the water.

IT MAY be one of the worst villages hit by the storm but the high winds and waves did not damage he community spirit in Kilbaha.

On Tuesday three young mothers returning from the early school run decided to begin a tidy up at the year -old playground that had fallen victim to the storm.

Suddenly passers bys joined in and other parents returning home with their children at 3pm joined the group with shovels, wheelbarrows and children willing to give a helping hand.

Farmers and local contractors joined the impromptu clean up with tractors and mini diggers and what could have taken weeks, according to local woman Ailish Connolly, took three hours.

As many as 30 adults and 20 children were involved in the clean up, with council workers and Rural Resource workers staying around to help.

“We are so privileged to be in a community like this where the methil is alive and kicking,” said Ms Connolly adding that there was time for the odd seaweed fight and some merriment.

The mother of three who is part of the playground committee said an engineer is expected next week to access the damage, but she is hopeful that the community will be able to do the repair work themselves.

Already farmers have pulled the buckled fencing into place using their tractors.

As clean ups are planned for neighbouring Ross and Rhinevella on Saturday, the community remain concerned about the impact the storm will have on local tourism.

Many of the roads have been com- promised which is a concern ahead of the launch of the Wild Atlantic Way next month. The Loop Head peninsula has been included in the bus tour of the west coast of Ireland so proper roads are essential.

THE community spirit continued into Carrigaholt as neighbours worked together to ensure people got to work, school and to the shops.

Local postmaster Pat Gavin, whose family was one of six marooned on a temporary island in Kilcredaun as a result of the storm and sea swells also praised the work of Clare County Council.

“Fair play, Clare County Council have done everything they can given their resources, but central Government have let us down,” he told The Clare People . “Part of what happened was due to neglect, even though I accept some flooding would have occurred,” he said.

The postmaster added he was referring to promises from the Government two and a half years ago that work would be completed at the seawall at Kilcredaun Irish College.

This work was estimated at the time at € 90,000. The sea wall was torn away in the storm and the college flooded as the people living there were segregated from the rest of the county by floodwater.

According to a Clare County Council report this week, restoration and reconstruction work on this part of the peninsula will cost € 622,000.

Mr Gavin said the generous spirit of neighbours, who loaned him a four-wheel drive, means he can now get to the post office every day.

Up to 250 yards off the main road remains under water as just 30 per cent of the water has receded. Clare County Council has put gravel on an old track so that the people living in Kilcredaun can now move around again.

Meanwhile farmers are struggling as their land remains under water. Even when the water recedes, they will have to reseed it in a bid to undo the damage of the seawater.

THOMAS Burke is fighting for his livelihood and facing the stark possibility that it may no longer sustain him following the storm and sea swells of early January.

The Kilrush farmer is one of just many dependent on the lands of West Clare for survival, now in serious trouble.

The suckler farmer is facing the real possibility of selling a portion of his herd as three quarters of a mile of his land along the coast at Shannakyle in now covered in gravel. More than 100 metres more has been washed into the sea.

Each day more and more land is eroded away as the sea walls he built to protect his land were also victim of the storm and high waves.

Mr Burke’s land is in the form of a mini peninsula that juts out into the sea, across from Scattery Island. As a result his 80-acre farm has been damaged on all sides.

During the height of the bad weather at least 30 acres, more than one third of his land was under water. This land will now have to be reclaimed from the damage of the seawater and all the debris that has been washed up.

He has also suffered thousands of euros of damage at three other points on his farm, including the loss of the sea wall he built.

“A half of mile of fencing was also destroyed and about 100 metres of land sucked out to the sea,” he told The Clare People . “The days that followed the storm caused more problems as the sea continued to erode the land that was no longer protected,” he said. “It will take three weeks with a digger to clean up,” he added explaining that the repair work will then begin. Even when the repair work is complete there will still be under-lying damage that will take years to rectify itself. “I am looking at the possibility of selling stock this year because the land won’t be recovered,” said the worried farmer. “There is no help coming as of now.”

ONE hundred per cent of the € 23.76 million requested by Clare County Council from central government must be forthcoming and soon if the local authority is to begin restoring the storm ravaged county. That was the message from county councillors at a special meeting on Friday, during which warnings were issued that lives will be lost if the infrastructure is not repaired immediately.

Cllr Richard Nagle (FF) said that one such urgent case was the main thoroughfare to the tourist attraction – the Cliffs of Moher.

“If something isn’t done at that location and other locations highlighted in this report, what is going to happen? Is it that that road will simply collapse and it is very close to that now? And if the road collapses, without ever talking about loss of life, it is going to result in a huge loss to the local economy, the main way to the cliffs will be collapsed and it will cost millions then. Whatever it is going to cost now that the road it there it will cost a lot more to be rebuild,” said the North Clare councillor.

He added however that priority must be given to people displaced by the storm and sea swells.

“We need a swift response from central government and a swift allocation of funds to start this work as a matter of urgency,” he said.

Cllr Michael Hillery (FF) was not confident that the close on € 24 million will cover the cost of the “damage I have seen along the coast line”.

Senior engineer with Clare County Council Tom Tiernan said the coun- cil will be working hard to restore local authority infrastructure.

He said the council’s focus would also be in making serous inroads into the village of Kilbaha in the coming weeks and Clahane north of Liscan nor “where serious damage has been done and a number of other areas where access is seriously curtailed”.

“We are a long way from having Lahinch ready for what is needed for the tourist season, but we will achieve it. This is something that is obviously very important to the county during the tourist season.”

IT WILL cost almost € 24 million to repair storm damage to 60 kilometres of coastline and 35 specific areas of Clare County Council managed infrastructures, with bills for the Office of Public Works, to private individuals and community groups expected to run into millions of euros more.

According to the Preliminary Storm Damage Report submitted to the Government by the local authority on Friday, it was the “worst experienced in living memory”.

More information relating to infrastructure the council maintains is the responsibility of the OPW will be forwarded to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government in the coming days.

These areas in question include Kildysart, Ballynacally, the Shannon embankments at Shannon Airport and Doonbeg at the site of the golf course.

“Clare County Council accepts there has been further significant damage to infrastructure not under the control of the council, in particular to estuary embankments along the Shannon Estuary and strategic tourism enterprises. An assessment of this damage will now be completed for the Government’s consideration,” said the county manager Tom Coughlan following a special meeting of the council.

The largest cost to the council will be repairing the promenade and dealing with the compromised rock armour at the seaside resort of Lahinch at € 5.84 million.

The county’s most westerly village of Kilbaha was also extensively damaged with repair work estimated at € 3.42 million, and a further € 622,000 estimated for Kilcredaun where six families were isolated from the main land for days.

Cloughaninchy, Quilty, which was the sight of devastating damage to homes is estimated to cost € 2.58 million.

Damage at New Quay is also over a million euros estimated at € 1.84 million with € 1.12 million of damage estimated to the N67 road at Moneypoint, Kilrush.

Senior engineer Tom Tiernan, who compiled the report, warned that the figures are as realistic as they can be at this early stage and are subject to change. He explained the vast bulk of the report relates to the destruction caused by the high winds and surging tides throughout the length of the Clare coastline through the first week of 2014.

“The vast bulk of damage caused by the first of the aforementioned three storms was most severely impacting inland – within 10 miles of the north and west coasts of the county. The vast bulk of the impact of the latter two events manifested itself at several locations along the county’s entire coastline and their respective severities are explained by the coincidence of very high tides, extremely low pressure centres moving in a south-west to north-east direction off the west coast of Ireland and severe south-west to west winds gusting at speeds of up to 150 km/hr onto the coastline,” he said.